


Origins

by lasergirl



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997), The Big Nowhere
Genre: M/M, Origin Story, dubcon on both sides
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny Upshaw is the new guy on the force. He's watching out for a foster kid he knows named Wendell White.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Origins

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this story was lost in the great LJ terror purge of several years ago. Imagine my surprise when it turned up while I was cleaning up my old desktop PC!

Rain in LA always came cinematically, drenching the innocent and causing havoc - not that it rained all the time but the weather seemed to have direction and motivation - just as falsely real as the rest of the city. On this night, choreographed lightning telegraphed between the cement and the sky, flashing cryptic semaphore to those who would never, ever, understand it. Hopheads, junkies, skids and bums and prosties - the sediment of humanity, the silt that gathered between the bricks of civilization - the perpetual victims, always taking it from behind - now taking shelter from the rain and trying not to bend until they broke.

At least the roof didn't leak - a minor thing to be thankful for anyway, and Deputy Danny Upshaw re-folded his cramped legs in the front seat of his car. The rain beat against the windshield, hazing a waterfall down the glass, drowned without even getting wet. Danny was only just twenty-six, the new boy on the force, fresh from policeman's classes and his .38 newly licensed and barely fired - a ghost of a smell of cordite and that was all. His stiff recruit crew cut was growing out, chestnut-brown and straight, and when it was longer the cowlick showed, one lock flopping coquettishly over one eye. Only schoolboys, guineas and spic pimps let their hair grow like that. Danny worried, spat on his finger and smoothed it back from his forehead.

These were stakeout nerves, soothed by nips at the bonded bourbon in the glovebox of his car - brutish, chrome-stripped, dripping wet and gleaming in the downpour. Danny rubbed fog from the corner of his window with one sleeve, and stole another look at the target. The house was a faux-rustic bungalow, ratty lawn, suspected of dope dealing and a little child prostie on the side. The tenants were state-registered foster parents, harboring kids from the orphanages, and the evidence was scant; a few bruises on a girl, marijuana dust in a boy's lunchbox at school. Nothing to convict, nothing to walk on, just an allover bad feeling and these little tremors, little nervous shakes of his hands on the steering wheel.

He checked his watch against the yellow glare of the streetlight, and it was going on midnight. The kiddies in bed, pickups on their way. Foster Mom and Dad counting out the reefer cigarettes on the kitchen table. If they were making a good buck, they had the sense not to let it show. The starved flowerbeds were mostly stones, and the porch sagged listlessly. Even a fresh coat of paint could have spruced the place up; not over that. Kick marks and scuffs on the front door, worn by busy hands in passage.

Danny checked his mental files on the tenants. Foster Mom, a Mrs. Talavera, housewife, and Mr. Talavera, auto-mechanic, lately unemployed, suspiciously still flush after the government handouts for the kiddies were spent. There was no doubt they were copping a little something on the side. On either side of the house, vacant lot, turning to seed and underbrush, now drenched wet in the rain. Maybe a good place to grow maryjane, but Danny wasn't sure if they were that stupid. Were the kiddies in on it? Did little Bobby know what was in his packed lunch? Or maybe Susie had it coming, wearing tight skirts and sucking on lollipops.

There were five kids in the house, not one of them related. The Talaveras really had a scheme going, even if the dope angle didn't pan out. The government paid for room and board of the kiddies, and in exchange they had to cough 'em back up to the army or navy when they were old enough. Danny was certain no one checked up on them - the raccoon holes under the porch made certain of that, the rats scampering to the gutter from the foundation. What a shithole.

Then there was movement at the house, a light on in the back bedroom. Danny placed it mentally - the three younger kids had a room to themselves, but it was the other side. This was Mom and Dad's room, and already over the pounding rain he could hear raised voices. They weren't women or children, this was pure testosterone-man enraged baritone bellowing, and a light tenor, a younger voice, taunting. Danny cracked a window, palming his badge from his coat pocket. With nervous fingers he pinned it to the lapel of his raincoat, shrugging under the turned-up collar. Maybe he wouldn't look like such a schoolboy if he had to go out into that rain. The .38 on his hip made him feel even younger.

A crash - glass breaking - and then the porch door burst open into the rain, a kid in hospital-striped pyjama bottoms and white undershirt staggered out, his fists clenched. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, seventeen, underfed but muscled, his hair cut brutal short. Mr. Talavera was close behind, his shirttail trailing, leather belt wrapped around one big fist, mouth open and obscenities pouring out.

"Don't run away from me you little slut!" Talavera bellowed, cocking the belted fist. The kid stood his ground, one hand holding up his sagging pyjamas, now drenched to the skin. "I'll bury you Wendell, I swear, unless you come back inside and apologize to your mother."

"She ain't my mother!" The kid screamed, his voice breaking on the high notes. Rain spattered on his back and shoulders, his bare feet gritty against the cracked asphalt. "And you can't make me touch her!"

"You don't have to touch her, Wendell, I promise, if you just come back inside, I'll get you all cleaned up and we go back to work, okay? Just you and me, then, and she can watch."

With a sob, the kid stepped backwards into the middle of the street, arms wrapped around his torso hugging himself. He rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet, biting his lip until blood ran down his chin. "I ain't coming back, not if you're there. I won't touch you anymore, do you hear me! No more!"

"You ungrateful son of a bitch," Talavera launched himself off the porch, oblivious of the pouring rain, and grabbed at the neckline of the kid's undershirt. "You mother's gonna wish she never had you, boy."

The fist swung, hard, but the kid didn't even seem to feel it. He was all limbs and twisting muscle, taking hits but giving them back as hard as he got. His right hook caught Talavera in the face, splitting open his lip, left to the ribs and even the man's solid fat and muscle couldn't absorb the blow. He staggered back, dropping the belt, and the kid snatched it up.

"You take back all that shit you said about my mother," he said, quivering, the belt curving like a whip from his hand. Talavera hocked and spit a gob of red at the kid's shirt in defiance.

"Son of a whore," he sneered, "where would you go? There isn't a person in this town who wouldn't drag you right back. Are you gonna turn tricks, Wendell? Peddle your skinny ass just to stay outta my hands?"

The kid shot a barefoot kick to the balls, a shot any pro footballer could have been proud of. Talavera doubled over with a strangled howl, right into the kid's knee. Then the belt flashed again and again, across Talavaera's wide back until he crumpled.

There was silence then, and a dull grumble of departing thunder as it churned across the Los Angeles valley. The kid stood there, chest heaving, arms stiff at his sides. He cocked his head, started down at the blubbering heap at his feet, then dropped the belt to the pavement. His knuckles were split and bloody, and he wiped them across his face where blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Danny jumped. He was out of the car and halfway to the kid before he realized it, his gun already in his hand, his badge glinting on his lapel. The rain was thinning, slowing, almost spent by the time he got there.

"Los Angeles Sherriff Department, there a problem here, son?"

The kid wheeled around, glaring eyes burning a hole right through him. "I'm nobody's son," he snarled. "And there's no problem. Who in hell called you?" He glanced down at Talavera, who was probably grateful for the interruption. "Not this pussy piece of shit?"

"A neighbor called it in, anonymous." Danny glanced down the street, both ways; no headlights, no signs of life. This sort of domestic disturbance must be a regular occurrence around here. "How old are you, kid?"

"I'm eighteen," and then Danny could see the signs of age on him, despite being underweight, the harder line of his jaw and the breadth of his shoulders, unexpectedly pink rosebud lips against the dark swelling at the corner of his mouth where Talavera had hit him. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Deputy Upshaw," and Danny felt his resolve slipping, the cool stoicism giving way to inexplicable friendliness with this kid, the scrappy against-all-odds survivor. He gave his hand to the kid to show he was okay, they shook - and then it went downhill.

Someone really had called the cops, the LAPD and not the Sheriff's Department, and the prowler came over the rise with its siren off, just the cherry lights flashing. The kid stiffened against Danny, awake and alive with fright, instantly looking for the closest way of escape.

"Relax, let me handle this," Danny flashed the kid a winning grin, a hand on his forearm to say it was cool, and he walked up the street towards the black-and-white with his wallet out, credentials showing.

"You can't touch this house," he said when he reached the two rookies in the prowler, "Sheriff's Department's got this place staked. You should have been informed."

The driver cursed a blue streak and stared down the street where the headlights picked out Talavera's body and the kid, looking back at them. "You say we can't move on this?"

"Scram," said Danny with a wide white grin, mentally tallying up the lies he would have to keep straight. The LASD had the house under surveillance but it was strictly no-touch, the city limits were well within LAPD jurisdiction and he was playing the line way too close. With more cussing, the rookies three-pointed their prowler back the way they came and Danny walked back to his car.

The kid met him there, shivering in the wet and maybe a little shocky. His teeth were clicking together in the dead silence of the street. Somewhere close off a dog barked rustily.

"I'm not going back," the kid said solemnly, "you got no idea the things they make me do in there. Ain't there some way I can come with you?"

"Okay, Buddy," said Danny, not sure what in the world made him say it, but he pulled a blanket from the trunk and gave it to the kid. "You gotta keep quiet about it though, and I got a favour to ask of you after."

The kid froze, eyes wide, one hand curling subconsciously into a fist. "And?" 

"Nah, it's an easy favour. Relax. You have to give me the juice on your stepfolks here." Danny sensed the uneasy understanding that the kid thought it was sex he wanted.

"You wanna give me a snitch jacket?" The kid grinned, teeth stained red. "Easy, big guy, you get me the hell outta here and I'll tell you anything you want."

**

The upshot of it all was arrests; the bruised and bloody Mr. Talavera in lock-up, Mrs. Talavera held under house arrest, and the stepkids shunted back to where they came from, the state orphanages full to bursting. Under all this, Deputy Upshaw's stellar witness shone, the rough-cut kid Wendell who knew it all; pickup dates, the little black book of customers, when the Missus was giving it out and the whole amateur porno thing the stepfolks had going on the side. Conclusion: kids snatched away as wards of the state, house tossed for evidence, a string of arrests and warrants out for customers and clients. Danny Upshaw no longer the fresh kid out of college, finally earning a little respect.

And then there was Wendell.

Danny made the mistake of bringing him home, after the rounds of questioning were over, and feeding him. Probably the second was the mistake, because by the sounds of things the kid had been in four or five foster homes in as many years and hadn't picked up his bulk yet. He'd ended up at the Talaveras because they had a reputation for reforming their charges. Danny knew now it was probably exhaustion and the threats of prostitution that kept them in line, but before the shit hit the fan they'd been borderline respectable.

He was housetrained, after a fashion, but the second week Danny hit a snag in his brilliant plan. The kid wasn't normal, well, not normal like a kid should have been at that age, not in school or working a job, or with a Mom or a Dad to keep him in line, and Danny wasn't any of those things. Wendell flopped on the sofa in pyjamas with a boneless ease that had Danny mentally restraining himself. The kid was not for touching; he could bite back, and bite hard, and Mr. Talavera's hospital stay was testament to that.

"Buddy," said Danny "if you're gonna lay around the place when I'm home you could do it with clothes on. There's nothing in my closet?"

The kid looked over at him and grinned as he scratched at the back of his neck. "Too hot. And the only thing I found in your closet was guinea pimp rags. What are you doing with a slick suit like that anyway?"

Danny flushed to his roots, the lock of hair falling down over his eye. "Undercover work," he said, "I didn't buy those."

"Are you a lousy liar," Wendell rolled off the couch and stalked to the bedroom closet, where he dug out a handful of dressy silk shirts and the snappy suit. "Tell me these don't need a good airing."

"What were you doing in my closet, anyway?" Danny leaned against the doorframe, projecting the cockiness that he smelt rolling in waves off of Wendell. "You think you were going to find things hidden in the very back? I'm a cop, Buddy, closets are the worst place to hide."

The kid twitched his head to the side, examining Danny with shrewd eyes. When he crossed the room to stand face to face, Danny almost flinched. Wendell's hands, those ruthless weapons that could crack a man's jaw, were curled loosely at his sides. 

"Who said anything about hiding in one?" His eyes were even with Danny's, grey-green with flecks of rust; serious, deep. Danny swallowed nervously.

Slowly, Wendell raised one hand and traced a line along Danny's unshaven jaw with his knuckle. A shiver ran down the deputy's spine, his firm resolve abandoning him for other, wilder thoughts. His cheeks flushed, his hand reaching out of its own accord for Wendell's waistband, the handful of flannelette pyjamas more solid than anything had been the past few weeks. Then the kid's hands were on him, pulling at his shirt buttons, peeling away the suitjacket. Danny's badge and gun hit the floor and were pushed aside.

"Why are you doing this?" Danny stammered, as Wendell backed him up against the dresser. His weight banged it against the wall, drawers banging shut against the back of his thighs.

"You don't get it, do you?" Wendell's rosebud mouth was at Danny's throat, sharp teeth trailing bite-marks across his neck, while the forceful hands undressed him. To his concern and amazement, Danny felt himself growing aroused, his hard-on pressing against Wendell's thigh. Still, the kid kept coming. "You think I did all that shit 'cause he threatened me to? You're more naïve than I thought."

"Buddy--" and Danny's words were choked back into his throat by the pressure of Wendell's mouth on his, the darting wet tongue against his teeth, mutual assent. Wendell bit down on his lip, prompting a hitch in Danny's breath and a liquid whimper from somewhere deep inside.

"Do you want this, Danny?" Wendell swivelled, grinding his hips against him, a brooding, predatory scowl painted across his face. "You been giving it, right? You gave it?"

Danny moaned, startling himself, his prick aching in his trousers, with those strong hands running up his thigh. Sure, he'd been giving it. Giving it good. Not to another man but to himself, and it was his highschool graduation and he remembered his best friend Tim, and how he felt so good around him. Touching himself in the men's restroom and thinking of that night, and the memory of it made his arousal even more persistent. Sure, he'd have given it that night. 'Cause giving it didn't mean you were a queer, no.

Wendell's hands tore at his fly, the trouser button skittering away under the bed. Danny's prick sprang free into the kid's hand before he realized, tried to pull away but it felt so good.

"I'm not a queer," Danny mumbled, the words lost in the junction of Wendell's shoulder and neck, the planes of muscle that Danny sank his teeth into, relishing the taste of salt sweat and scent of clean cotton. "I don't take it,"

"That's right, Danny," said Wendell, trailing hands and lips down onto his knees, "Queers take it, Danny, you give it. Give it to me." He took Danny's prick and sucked it, the whole length of it, into his mouth, which was about the only thing that could shut the both of them up. Danny twitched and wriggled against the dresser, knocking dents in the wall and loving every second of it. Rubbing himself to sleep at night, jerking off in the shower, none of it was like this; the kid knew his business, knew just where to push with his tongue, didn't gag, didn't twist his head or bite down. Danny's hands clenched into fists at the collar of his pyjama shirt, the fabric taut between his fingers, his mind a pinwheel of black and neon. Wendell brought Danny right to the edge of the cliff, paused a moment and then ruthlessly, brutally, dragged him over until he came, whimpering and sobbing and falling back against the wall. And when Danny opened his eyes the kid was stepping back, wiping the corner of his mouth with one hand the way Danny had seen him do that first night in the middle of the street.

"Tell me you didn't want that," said Wendell lazily, and pulled Danny onto the bed, crawling onto the pile of guinea suits and silk shirts, kicking them to the floor. Danny grunted an assent, buried his face into the covers and slept.

**

Danny didn't let his dick get the better of him again, after that night. Straight-laced Sheriff's deputies don't let themselves get sucked off by wards of the state. Danny quivered inside when he thought of the headlines "Deputy Cop Comes To Blows Over Child Witness" and saw his fledgling career flashing before his eyes. They could call him all the names in the book that fit, but that would never do. Things were tough enough as they were, he didn't need to add temptations to his confusion.

So he broached the subject, "You ever think about being a cop, Buddy?" The kid actually listened to him; big surprise. Sat down, looked at him and actually listened.

"Yeah, I did once," and that brooding, intense look of pain crossed his face, the one that reminded Danny of the way he felt at the end of a shift; all pent-up sex and hard nerves craving a cigarette, a bourbon and a time-out. "When I was twelve, my old man skipped out of town and I wanted to hunt him down and strangle him. Didn't get a chance, I got stuck in juvie and in some of the worst foster homes you probably ever saw. You ever seen a rat bite a baby?"

Danny nodded; he knew there were suburbs in LA that were just as low, just as forgotten as this kid. Maybe he could turn that rage outward, give the kid a target. With the right vents, Wendell could breeze through traffic school and out of uniform fast; maybe even onto the Sheriff's Department or a riot squad within ten years. He had muscle, knew how to use it, and he definitely had the smarts. None of this he said, holding his tongue for the kid to spill his guts.

"You know what they do to you in juvie? You been to prisons, I'm sure you know what it's like. When those perverts raise you, teach you how to be a man you gotta get some of it wrong." Wendell hung his head, staring at his scarred knuckles. "And that stuff I did, Danny, it was cause I got paid or I was paying somebody back. I ain't a queer."

Danny sat down next to him, shoulders touching, as close as man-to-man could get without bordering on the illicit. "Buddy, what you've got to realize is being a cop means calling the shots. You won't take shit from no-one. And there's nothing lavender about grabbing a man's balls when your fist is clenched. You remember that."

"Christ, Danny," the kid said, falling into Danny's shoulder and sobbing, "I never meant to go that far. I'll do it, tell me what to do."

**

Wendell graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy after plenty of hard work and many fists through plaster walls. He wasn't dumb; just didn't know how to use his head, he wanted to jump the gun and keep on jumping until he found the old man for his payback. But a new sense of calm came over him with the badge and uniform, a sleek satisfaction that only Danny could recognize as identity. It was the same feeling he'd felt pinning that badge to his shirt and strapping on the .38. The uniform made you a new man, erased all the sins of your past - and there were many. The uniform was another layer of armour between you and the world, and Wendell needed it if he was going to fit back into society.

So Deputy Upshaw, Sheriff's Department, attended the graduation ceremony with a wide smile, applauding the graduands and their shining future in law enforcement. When he met up with the kid after the ceremony, they clasped hands firmly and grinned at each other.

"Hey, Bud," said Danny, "Sorry to hear you're not giving the Sheriff a run for his money. But the LAPD need you. Good luck."

"I'll remember what you said, Danny, All of it," and the newly-fledged Probationary Office Wendell White clapped him on the shoulder, gave him a quick, sharp embrace. "Thanks."

 

END


End file.
